Normally I don't hang with religious people...

I'm an exception to a lot of rules. Either it's because I'm persistently defiant, relentlessly stubborn, or idealistically empathetic or maybe some other reason or maybe a whole bunch of reasons, but whatever the reason or combination of reasons, people tend to have a hard time categorizing me, or they quickly categorize me wrongly to suit their defense mechanisms because I'm some sort of threat in some way. Regardless, I don't seem to fit in in a lot of ways wherever fitting may be necessary or at least encouraged...

Religion is no exception.

A few people have told me recently that generally they don't enter into the company of my "kind", and also generally, their "kind" is "liberal".

"Equal rights for everybody! End ignorance! Down with the religious!"

You know what I mean?

I answered the guy who told me that normally, he doesn't "hang with religious people" that that was ok because I wasn't religious anyway. He didn't buy it.

Anyway, back to the gay issue. I've been meaning to blog about it again for a couple of weeks at least, but things got in the way (I'll blog about those later.. I really should be more disciplined in this blog, or less... I'd probably blog more if I was less disciplined.. But I digress.).

A few weeks ago, I had a soul-changing conversation with a theology pastor of one of my favorite churches about homosexuality. So the Bible says it's a sin. But a lot of things are a sin. This post is not about that. It's about my perception of my gay peeps being skewed by my "liberalism".

One of the arguments on the gay side as to why being gay is a natural, God-given, innate part of a character is, "Why would anybody choose a life that is more difficult? Why would they deliberately inflict this hardship on themselves?" And I used to wholeheartedly agree.

And then I became a Christian.

Do you know how hard it is to be a Christian in not only an atheist/agnostic society, but a staunchly anti-religious society? It's effing hard. I get belittled, made fun of, and my opinions, even if they were formed long before Jesus came to haunt me, are of no merit because I'm a Christian. But that's all ok. I mean, it's hard, but that's ok. But the hate I have a hard time with. The hate that I am exposed to makes this new lifelong endeavor nearly unbearable sometimes.

It's one thing to get hated on by strangers. But when your eyes are opened to the brutal hate in the people you love? That hurts. That hurts like hell.

I love them. I know them. I've shared life with them. They've been there for me and vice versa through great times and terrible times. And then one day, I cracked open a book somebody gave me, and I began to love them even more while they began to hate me and reduce me to a stereotype. It wasn't something I said. It wasn't an aspect of my personality. It was the new category I fit into that they didn't associate with. At all.

But I'm still me. I didn't get beaten with an ignorant stick and lose all my reason, accountability or justice. I didn't lose my common sense. All I did was doubt my doubts. All I did was question my doctrine or whether I had had any at all. All I did was break down the walls I had constructed around me out of hate and ignorance.

That's not to say that people without faith are hateful people, nor are they ignorant, just that maybe what separates them from exploring spirituality in the form of God is hate and anger, as was the case in my own life. And if you're atheist or agnostic and think I'm wrong, feel free to let me know, but if you do so by means of angry rantings, you're likely to prove my point rather than your own. Just sayin'.

Anyway, that's not my point. My point is I chose a path that was excessively difficult. The life I am choosing makes me cry. Often. But while Jesus might not make me happy all the time, He infuses my life with a joy that I would never have known otherwise.

I could have hidden it. I could have been a closet Christian, which in some ways I was, but if I truly believe it, then hiding it is, as the Bible says, like putting a basket over a flame. You just don't do that. You let the light glow openly.

The other thing the theology pastor pointed out was that I expect Jesus to move in my life and change the most fundamental things about my core. I expect Him to change parts of me that I was born with or that are so ingrained into me that they are just second nature at this point. I expect him to change things about me that make me who I am. And I don't apply the same standards to gay people. It's hard for me to write anything remotely close to "gay people choose to be gay" because that makes me cringe instinctively, but at the same time, I do believe there is a lot of brokenness in my gay friends' lives that goes unchecked because their sexuality is such a huge issue. Their concept of love and relationships is so skewed, but the majority of the people I know just pass it off as being part of the gay perception, rather than being as hard on it as we are towards our hetero friends' busted up views of love and relationships.

[Keep in mind that I'm not categorizing all the gay people in the world. I'm just talking about a few I know. And also keep in mind that I'm just one girl, with my own perceptions and opinions based on my own limited experience and my opinions rarely are of any consequence in the great realm of things, so it's not like what you might disagree with in this post is moving through the lives of thousands of people or anything... /end midpost disclaimer :D]

Can gay people have healthy relationships? I still believe they can, just as much as heteros can. But just like heteros, I think they get stuck in patterns of self-fulfilling prophesy and cycles of interference from damaging emotional baggage that they drag along behind them.

Can Jesus heal the baggage and the relational brokenness? Sure. But the problem lies with what I feel gay people need. The problem lies with the fact that I actually don't know what Jesus needs to heal in them.

And that, the theology pastor said to me, is a fierce double standard.

So what is my role as a Christian in a gay person's life?

After a couple of weeks of working on it and praying on it, I came to the conclusion that the role is the same as it is in anybody's life- I just have to show them Jesus. I have to live out the Gospel all day, every day, and IF God opens their heart to it, and gives me the means through which I might guide them, and IF He calls them to repentance and drastic life changes, then my role will become one of a more active support in that respect.

But until then, telling a gay person they're sinning is way counterproductive. For a person who doesn't know Jesus to not sin is religion. It's not a change of heart. It's not a new heart.

Somebody in a sermon (I can't even remember which church it was) said, "The goal is not to try so hard to stop sinning, but to be satisfied in God." The goal is not religion and good behaviors, it's Jesus and the Gospel.

So if my friends are gay, and if members of my family idolize money, and other friends of mine idolize relationships, and others still are prideful and lustful, working desperately and hopelessly to get them to alter these core behaviors and perceptions will be fruitless and laden with judgment and resentment. The only way to effect the drastic change required for real life-changing repentance is if it comes as a reaction and response to the grace and mercy of God.

So what's my role? To live in Jesus, love in Jesus, forgive in Jesus and all the while, making sure I point it all back to Him and make it known that it is all done for His glory and not for the people around me to glorify me as a good, kind, loving and generous person. The goal is to reflect God in my every day life such that the people around me are stirred into passion for their own souls and their own eternity.

That's how I see it for now anyway.

And frankly, is that not enough of a challenge to focus on?

On Forgiveness...

When I started this blog, I was at a point where I was desperately trying to figure out what forgiveness was (I still am). I was broken, shattered into tiny fragments of my already broken self and forgiveness was nothing but a flash of a reflection of a thought that I'd catch every now and then and quickly shove to the back of my thinker. I had emailed my favorite pastor and asked him if in the history of his recordings of his sermons, there was one on forgiveness.

Thankfully, he said no.

Thankfully because had I listened to them soon after my betrayal, the significance of any hard words on forgiveness would have hit my hardened heart and nothing would have gotten in.

Finally, a couple of weeks ago, one of the podcasts I subscribe to had a sermon entitled, "Forgiveness". Just like that, hanging out in the open, declaring itself as the sermon I'd been asking for, and so I listened to it with a heart as open as was possible for me, as though the sermon was meant for me.

It was a hard message. If Jesus knows all I've done and all I will do and all the thoughts in my head for the duration of my existence as a human being and He forgave me for them all already and died on the cross for me, then how can I not forgive one event? Or even a few events? However brutal they may be, they don't compare to what I've done to Jesus.

My earliest childhood memory is of my dad hoisting me up to the railing of the balcony on my childhood home which hovered off the edge of a hill, so that somebody far below could take our picture. I was probably three, or maybe even two, with my curly red hair and goofy grin, but what I remember most was thinking he was going to throw me over. At that young of an age, I don't know how, but somehow, I didn't trust my own father already. I didn't trust anybody already.

Later on, when we'd go shopping, he'd hoist me onto his shoulders and I'd be so terrified of falling that I'd white knuckle his hair until he couldn't stand the pulling anymore and would take me down. I always thought I was on the verge of falling and that nobody would catch me.

In elementary school, I did the second level of swimming lessons over and over and over and failed every time. The entire school had moved on and were at least five levels ahead of me and I still failed. I couldn't put my head under water because even with lifeguards and tons of people around, I was so sure I'd drown and nobody would notice.

And I remember really early on, I believed in the Man in the Moon, not that he was a being, but that he was a spirit, watching over me, making sure I was ok because nobody else was. But then one night, I felt a bright light on my face through my blinds and crawled out of bed to see what it was. It was the quarter moon, a giant slice in the sky, but that night, the darkened side was vaguely lit and all of a sudden, I was crushed. Somehow, revealing that other side killed any illusion that the Man in the Moon was real. Somehow, right then- I must have been five or six at most- I stopped believing that anything was watching over me. I was alone in the universe and had to fend for myself.

I spent the next twenty-three or so years in that frame of mind, going through abusive situation after abusive situation, getting myself crushed over and over and crushing myself over and over. But for some reason, I never gave up. I just kept picking myself up simply because I had the capacity to. Somehow, I was given the resources and reserves of strength to withstand the brutal life beatings I kept getting.

I was a very angry teenager. I drank a lot and rebelled a lot. I was never bullied because I had an air about me that said, "I value my life less than you do yours. Try me." Nobody did... I had absolutely no value and nothing to lose.

But for some reason I kept going.

At sixteen I stopped drinking for good, deciding that the path that alcoholism led to was not a path I was willing to make my legacy.

The story goes on and on and all the while, God was a non-issue. I had thought about eternal things but as quickly as the subject came up, my mind went to a place where it "knew" it didn't know the answers and that was ok. After spending a lifetime alone with no protection and not feeling loved, the only thing that made sense was exactly that- that there was nothing. I was meaningless and useless other than for the here and now. As sad as that may sound, to me at the time, it was just how it was. I didn't know anything else. There wasn't another reality I felt I was missing out on.

But at the same time, I did mock religion. I mocked Jesus. I mocked His mindless, irrational, non-thinking followers. I mocked His sheep. I mocked everything about Him.

And you know, this week, I realized how funny it was that Jesus used so many sheep analogies and now atheists and "anti-religionists" use sheep as an insult. "You're sheep! Sheeple!" and while they think that's an scathing insult, from the inside, I've learned that it's what we're called to be. We're a flock, and none of us are meant to overpower the others. We're meant to bond together in order to survive. But I digress.

My point is, I totally blasphemed my way through life. People have their sins that Jesus forgives, but mine, I think is the worst kind.

My favorite pastor was talking about the worst possible thing his daughters could do to him- it wouldn't be to rebel against him or to be angry with him or to tell him off because he's disciplining them and they don't like it. The worst possible thing would be if they abandoned the relationship with him completely. If they said, "Dad, I don't want you in my life at all anymore." And that's what I did to Jesus (I know, those of you who know me will think, "hey, you did it to your mom too!" but where my mom is a broken and flawed person and my relationship with her is equally broken and flawed, Jesus wasn't and my relationship with Him wasn't abandoned because of His brokenness- and it's a story for another day.. ;)).

That little girl who let go of any "delusions" at such a young age so readily (I mean, come on, the dark side of the moon? Really?) must have broken God's heart so badly. I was barely conscious as a human being and I had already rejected whatever semblance I had of any kind of superior being along with any feeling of eternal love.

But Jesus forgave me. He watched me turn away and break my own heart and waited until it was just hard enough and brittle enough to shatter it completely and let Himself in. I won't take credit for that analogy though. That was Matt Chandler's. The harder your heart gets to Jesus, the easier it becomes for Him to crack it open, he said (paraphrased, obviously).

And it's true. In early winter 2007, I blogged a blog post entitled, "Tonight, I hate your god." At the time, I never capitalized the G as a sign of blatant and deliberate disregard for religious symbolism, and I took particular care of the one in my title because it was directed at one specific believer who told me he could not love me because I wasn't Christian. Of course, now I know that that very statement is completely backwards and absolutely unChristian in the deepest sense, but at the time, that type of mentality fit in with everything I already "knew" (or thought I knew) about religion, Christianity and Jesus.

Making a hateful statement about God as a title for a blog post written to intentionally hurt a Christian is about as hard-hearted as a girl can possibly get, even if the act itself is relatively trivial.

Being that my friends are, for the most part, atheist or agnostic, and most despise religion for a variety of reasons, the comments that post elicited were all positive and cheering me on, basically saying, "I want to be a part of your religion!"

I got non-believers to believe even less. I got non-believers to hear rational and irrational explanations that led them further from God. I did that my entire life.

If there is a God, and if that God breathed life into me, I accepted my gift of life, took it excitedly to a corner of the room, knelt down to unwrap it and whispered to myself, "I got this for myself. I did this. Through my own will and my own strength, I made it here. I'm alone in the universe and nobody cares about me. I did this."

And Jesus was watching.

For twenty-eight years.

I grew more and more angry and more and more belligerent, and then, when I was ready, He shattered my brittle, broken, busted up heart, took the pieces in His hands and handed them back to me saying, "Let's rebuild this. Let's." And after all my shatterings and brutal experiences, I finally said humbly, "Ok."

Ok, Jesus, help me rebuild my broken, shattered soul. And help me to forgive those around me who have wronged me and who have contributed to the shattering that brought me closer to You. Help me to forgive the way You forgave me. Help me love those I don't feel I have the power to love. Give me the power to love through Your powerful love, give me the strength through Your strength, and give me the humility to know it's from You when does happen. Give me the humility to divert the praise and the glory to You rather than using it to boost my own ego. It's all from You. Everything.

Thank You for showing me what forgiveness is and what love is such that through your example I might have hope for me and my hard, spiteful, resentful, scarred heart.

And might all of the goodness that happens beyond my comfort zones and through my growth in You point those around me to You and Your glory.

On access to abortion...

Whether or not you think abortion is murder, whether or not you think it's a sin, whether or not you think it's up to the woman to choose- that is not my issue today. My issue is women's safety. If you eliminate abortion or make access to it more difficult, the result will most likely not be fewer abortions, rather more self-abortions, and that was the basis for the change in the laws in Canada to legalize abortion in the first place.

Today, on the news, I heard that the Quebec government passed a law saying that abortions can only be performed in sterile operating rooms. Up until now, they'd been performed mostly in private clinics with sterile equipment but not necessarily a completely sterile environment. The risks associated with the not perfectly sterile environment are so low, apparently. But what this law means is that these clinics will be forced to shut down and women will end up waiting for ORs at hospitals or CLSCs (clinics run by the provincial government directly), which will not only create more of a backlog for the ORs, but also will increase wait times and decrease accessibility to abortion "services".

Some doctors are saying that this law is just an underhanded way of limiting abortion after repeated failures to do so through the court system.

Whatever way you slice it, it's not good.

Some people reading this will probably say it's unChristian of me to write about how abortion clinics are "good" or whatever, but I really don't see it that way.

Abortions are not the problem here. They're a symptom. It's kind of like saying we should ban rehab clinics because they cause drug use. The behavior that results in seeking an abortion is what is wrong here. And I don't mean wrong as in morally or ethically- I'm not stating an opinion on that in this particular post. I mean wrong as in broken.

Here in Quebec, as far as I know, girls can have abortions as young as fourteen without their parents ever finding out. And because of our universal health care, they're free. We can also go to the pharmacy and get the morning after pill without a prescription. Do these two facts increase irresponsible sexual behavior in young girls?

I'm going to go with no.

Why?

They're already having tons of irresponsible sex anyway. That aspect of this particular society has been broken for a long time now.

Look around. Here in Quebec- I won't speak for other places, only what I know and where I grew up- women are not respected. I don't know what the statistics are, but it seems women outnumber men, and the mentality becomes if you don't treat your man a certain way, he'll get rid of you for the next one. Relatively few people get married here, as there is an overwhelming number of couples cohabiting (30% of couples in Quebec are common-law), most under the false impression that they are subject to the same rights as married couples.

(By the way, for any Quebec common-law ladies who are reading this, if you break up, you get nothing unless it has your name on it. Be warned. You are not married in the eyes of the law, even if you pay taxes as though you are. But I digress...)

My point is, with parents splitting up (Quebec's divorce rate is far higher than that of the rest of Canada according to Stats Canada, says the Vanier Institute of the Family), dads (for the most part) not playing a constant positive role in a girl's development, and the girl not being taught to respect herself or to respect her worth by both parents, we end up with this problem we have today, where 30,000 Quebecers get abortions every year. If the population here in Quebec is 50% women, that's nearly 8 women for every 1000 that get abortions every year.

There is also a lack of respect for sex and the consequences of it here too. When I was growing up, abstinence was not an option. The only time abstinence was ever talked about was when ridiculing the idea of it. I was taught that sex wasn't a big deal and there was no reason to value it other than for pleasure and fun. I didn't value my body. I never thought I was losing a piece of myself every time I gave my body away. I never thought sex was a spiritual endeavor. I never thought it affected my soul.

Growing up in a Godless atmosphere meant my eternal self was never emphasized. In that frame of mind, things that happen right now are all we have and are all that is worth our time, our effort and our drive. There are no eternal consequences and while there may be some potential damage to the body, there's no damage to the soul. Emotional and physical hurts can, for the most part, be healed with time and those that can't can be dealt with, coped with and moved on from regardless.

The problem with that view is this thing from which we view the world, our conscience and internal voice, our thinker, often seems to be independent from our physical body. It seems to come from within but also from eternity. It's the eternal "why me" thing again- Why was I born into this perception of the world? Why was I born as a human in this time and place? Why do I have these particular skills and talents and not others?

Why are we all so drawn to oceans, mountains, deserts, and space? Why are we so drawn to the seemingly infinite things we have access to here on Earth? Is it because our soul longs for it? Maybe it's because our soul is crying out from within us trying to tell us, "Hey, that's me. I'm infinite too."

Whatever it is, it's easy, especially as a child, to get wrapped up in temporary things and abandon our future here on Earth, not to mention the forever future, if there really is one. Without spiritual guidance, we become so inwardly focused that we lose sight of what's important, of what's around us and of ourselves. Our world revolves around us to the point where we trample and crush other people or creatures to get where we want to be. But when we do get there, it's not nearly as rewarding as we had anticipated and the end result is a relentless search for the next idol- be it relationship, sex, toys, money, fame, whatever- that will satisfy our soul temporarily and superficially.

When I was growing up, temporary things were all things. They were the goal and the measure of success.

Today, on my way home from work, I was listening to a sermon wherein the pastor (Matt Chandler of The Village in Dallas, Tx, (Dec 07, 2008, Temptations from Within)) says:

The book of Proverbs says there’s a type of woman that men should avoid. She is sensual, she is overtly sexual and in the end she wants to devour or destroy the man. Which means she doesn’t really have any interest in the man; she just wants to see for her own gratification if she’s pretty enough, beautiful enough and skillful enough to make him choose her over his wife. She has no love for him; she simply wants to destroy him. The Bible says such a woman exists. The Bible says that there’s a type of man that women should avoid who is flirtatious, who is gifted at spotting weak-willed women and taking advantage of them.

(Disclaimer: the views expressed in the blog so far and from here on are just mine, not those of the Village or any pastor affiliated with the Village or any other church. Ok? Ok.)

That was the kind of woman I was raised to aspire to be. And that is what the men around me were raised to aspire to be also. In my case, it was an empowerment. It was marketed to me as a new kind of feminism. I didn't realize that the feelings of empowerment were blocking out feelings of insecurity and an overwhelming core truth I had held that I was unlovable. The empowerment temporarily satisfied this deep down feeling that I wasn't worth more than one night or a couple of nights, that while I won the guy over, anything beyond superficiality and lusty, physical, detached sex was not something I deserved nor was I good enough to get. The core of me "knew" that once a person really got to know me, they wouldn't want me anymore, but the fact that I'd gotten them already, that even though my person was so unlovable, I'd still succeeded at getting them to give me their all physically, raised me up for a short period of time. Of course, I didn't go after married men, but in the Christian sense, technically sleeping with anybody other than your spouse is adultery; therefore, from a Christian point of view, I was no better even if they were single.

Anyway, my point is growing up in a place that was not only Godless but also lacked any sense of eternity, the consequences of my actions we're only relevant in the short term. Having sex and/or getting an abortion under these pretenses becomes a temporary thing. While most of the media stories about girls who've had abortions center around girls who regret it and are all teary-eyed about it, many of the girls I know who have had abortions don't seem feel anything about it. I don't know if they repress it, justify it or if they really don't feel any remorse whatsoever, but it doesn't seem to trouble them in the years afterward. What does trouble them, however, are the unexpected immediate consequences. Apparently, and I say "apparently" because I'm only going by the anecdotes of several girls I know who have had abortions, because of the sudden, unexpected loss of the zygote or fetus, sometimes the body compensates by producing a tumor. At least three of the girls I've talked to had that experience, and that was troubling to them. Again, the immediate effects draw attention but not the long term effects on the person or potential eternal effects on the soul.

Of course, there are probably hundreds of other factors as to why these particular girls get abortions, but that's what I'm trying to get at- there are reasons. There are deep-rooted beliefs and principles that for some reason are skewed to the point where women are not valuing their own body, not seeking the respect and commitment they are meant to have, and not understanding the potential consequences for their actions.

One thing is certain though, when a girl gets to the point of deciding on an abortion, we should do our utmost to keep her safe and that includes access to proper medical care. As Christians, even if she has committed what you deem to be a sin, she is a child of God. If we miss the opportunity to guide her in a more healthy direction from the start, we still have to forgive her and love her and guide her to repentance through that love. Through hate and fear-mongering, we drive people away.

What about the fetus' rights? There's only so much you can do. You can try to counsel the woman involved or earlier on, try to lift your daughters up and raise them to be godly and respectful of themselves in hopes that they might not end up in a situation where abortion is an option. You can. But at a certain point, it might be too late, and to me, that's when you have to trust God. Trust Him to take care of the soul that never stood a chance. Trust Him to have His reasons for allowing this to happen.

I know that sounds terrible, but you can't control everything. You can do what is in your power, but at a certain point, you have to give stuff up to God rather than starting to spread hate.

I've been told that my mom considered aborting me. I was conceived too close to my brother and they weren't sure if it was safe. You would think that from that perspective, I'd be all anti-abortion. But I'm not. I was born anyway and spent around twenty-eight years hating God. If I had a part in His plan, whether my mom would have killed me or not, that part would play out. I believe God would have either kept my soul or distributed it into another body.

And one thing I don't get is this whole sanctity of life thing. John 12:24-25 says this:
24 Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

Can somebody enlighten me as to where the sanctity of life thing is in the Bible? I haven't hit that part yet. The parts I seem to hit are the "to die is gain" parts (Philippians 1:21). Can anybody point me to a couple or a few?

I guess the conclusion I draw from this all is that we all have to trust God more. Trust God to take care of us, trust God to love us. Trust God that through being His children alone we have self-worth. Trust God that He really does want us to love one another as Jesus loved us. Trust God about the important role that marriage plays and that parental influence plays in our own life and our kids' lives. Trust only God to fulfill us. Basically, trust God in everything.

If we did that, maybe we wouldn't have this idolatry issue, the hate issue, the pride issue, and so on and so on.

If we did that, maybe we might understand what it's all about and actually follow through with what God is asking of us. And if we truly followed through and lived out the Gospel, we might actually be Christian.

In the meantime, maybe we should pray that God change hearts, including our own. Maybe we should pray that God guide these women, and pray that if we are the means through which He intends to guide them, He might give us the right words, the most effective words and the most gospel-centered words with which to move them.

On Baptism...

I was baptized a Catholic when I was barely old enough to hold my head up. The priest held me up and declared me Princess in front of grumbling, displeased Catholic family members. Till the day he died, my grandfather called me Erika just because he hated the name Princess. There was a lot of hate, I guess, and with time, I grew to hate that I was baptized. I hated that I didn't have any say in it, and had I had any say in it, I never would have allowed some priest juice to be sprinkled on my forehead.

"What religion are you?" people would ask me when I was younger.
"Nothing."
"You can't be nothing. Were you baptized Catholic?"
"Yeah, but it was against my will."
"It doesn't matter. If you were baptized, you're Catholic."

I hated it. Eventually, as the people around me grew older, they too relinquished their religion and the questions stopped. Most of the people I know never discuss religion until they have their first baby and grandparents put pressure on them to baptize.

"Are you going to do it?" I'll ask.
"Bah, why not? It doesn't mean anything and it'll make my grandmother happy."

Being that my godmother and godfather broke up shortly after I was baptized and went their separate ways, and also that being a godmother or godfather has no real significance here other than standing and posing for pictures and assuming you get custody of the kid if its parents should die somehow, even though their will most likely specifies otherwise, the spiritual guidance I received was pretty limited.

I remember one discussion with my grandmother about religion. We'd grown closest when I was a teenager and I was painting the entire inside of her house. I asked her how the creation story made any sense to her and she started on about how her church believed in seven stages rather than days, and went on to say that God was love and that, "One day, megirl, I hope you figure it out." Or maybe she was more certain. Maybe she said, "One day, megirl, you will figure it out." She might have been certain but for me to remember it, I had to have grasped it in a completely non-pushy way. I do remember the way she looked at me when she said it. And the way she put her arthritic hands heavily on my shoulders. And she was wearing grey.

She'd do that often. She was the only one. We'd talk for hours and when she really needed me to hear something, she'd put her hands heavily on my shoulders and look me squarely in the eye and say it. Things like, "Your father did his best, megirl," and "Love your brothers. They'll be your best friends."

I wish I could remember them all.

When I was in Ireland, she sent me a letter telling me to eat. I'd struggled with anorexia for ages and ages (and still do), and so she wrote pretending to be supportive of me contemplating a philosophy degree only to get "accidentally" sidetracked into a discussion about the importance of body nourishment.

After the whole betrayal thing happened a few months ago and I stopped eating again, I was cleaning out some boxes and found that letter. Without a doubt, God had given cluttery me some sort of sudden will to sort and let my grandmother, who died less than a year after that letter was written, set me straight again. And you know, it wasn't the most elaborate letter, or profound letter, but she knew me, and she knew how I pushed back and spoke to me in such a way that I didn't. There was a sort of hesitation in her writing, which now I can see as her trying to produce the exact right phrasing to get through to me. And it does, still.

Her birthday is August 23rd. This year, like my birthday, it falls on a Sunday. And this year, my favorite church in North Carolina that I love is having a baptism barbecue on her birthday. And I so can't afford to go and I'm not sure my car will make it down there a second time this summer. But how can I not?

So I prayed on it. I asked God to help me decide whether or not I am supposed to go down there for this. I still am praying about it. I have a little under three weeks to decide.

And last night, I was talking about God things with my sister-in-law for a while, and at around midnight, my brother interrupted and asked, "Do you realize that since you got here you haven't stopped talking about God? No wonder dad shuts down about it right away. Otherwise, you just don't stop talking about it." My sister-in-law stood up for me, and we both argued that she was the only person around me with whom I felt safe talking about God things. I never talk to my dad about it. I showed him my new giant ESV study Bible because that thing, regardless of its content, is an amazingly impressive, intimidating book and right away, he shut down. I showed him a book for size sake and he shut down. I can't talk about it with him at all. And apparently, my brother feels invaded by it too.

On my way home, I asked God if I was ready to be baptized. Am I? Because I still hide it from people. I still have my Jesus fish wedged between the seats in my car rather than stuck to the trunk. I still only get into discussions about Jesus if He happens to come up somehow. I'm still not fully ready or all that excited about becoming a complete social outcast. I've already lost a lot of my friends about this and a lot of respect from the people I haven't lost. But am I going all in?

I worried about that for a while- how some people leave their family behind to go serve God and how it terrifies me that one day, God might ask me to leave my dogs behind. Some might say, "They're just dogs," but I made a commitment to them to keep them safe and as healthy and happy as I could. I can't betray them. I can't leave them behind. So I prayed on it too, and I realized that I was making God out to be somebody or something who crushes everybody to get what He wants. God knows my heart. He knows what I can handle and what I can't, and I think we both know I can't handle losing my dogs because of something I did to them. My sacrifice is not my dogs. My sacrifice is my speech. For now, my sacrifice is my openness about my faith.

God could ask me to leave it all behind and go spread the Gospel somewhere far away. He could. But everybody around me is without Him. Everybody. Even the majority of the members of the one Catholic family I know who goes to church every week don't know Him. Of all the people around me, so far one of the Catholic people I know has been the least receptive of Jesus. I tried to get her to listen to a sermon about why our behaviors change when our heart changes because of Jesus and in two months and a bit, she says it's still on her "to do" list, but she hasn't had the time.

So yeah, I've got a ton of work for Jesus right here that doesn't involve destroying myself by removing my dogs from my life. But it does involve breaking myself and throwing myself into a world of discomfort and rejection.

Am I ready for that?

Is it right for me to get baptized if I'm not? Can I still love Jesus enough to get dunked even if I'm not ready to sacrifice the hardest thing yet?

I'll just keep praying on it and see what He says.

Fleeting spirituality...

Part of the reason I think I've had such a moving experience with Christianity and with studying it is that early on, I committed myself to it. I didn't commit myself to believing it, but I committed myself to learning it, and learning it meant opening my heart to it.

Learning anything about spirituality requires an opening of the soul. It just does. We can't crack open some textbook, read through it on a literal level and assume we understand it. Spirituality, by nature, has to stir the soul for us to begin to understand it.

If people are somehow moved to tears by teaching in the Bible, what is it that moves them? And if you set out to learn it, are you prepared to dive in to let it move you at your core?

If not, there's no point in reading it. Really. If you begin reading it with an eye roll, as I did in the very beginning, the message will not penetrate. If you begin reading it with prayer, even if you don't believe the prayer, then you've taken at least one step towards letting the words move you and letting the message change you.

"Please, God, if you exist, help me to see what it is you're trying to say, if it is you at all. If you do exist, help me to see you."

That's all it takes.

But that is a commitment statement. Asking God to show Himself to you and to help you see His message is committing to opening your heart to it. I don't believe that you can do that with all religions and forms of spirituality at the same time. You have to give your entire soul to one, let it move you, and once you've been moved, only then move on to another form of spirituality if you feel the need to continue to explore.

It does take a commitment. It's kind of like falling in love, in a way. You can't fall in love with somebody and progress into a deep, intimate love without deciding to participate in it. You can't be indifferent to somebody, learn about them on a purely superficial level and develop a profound love for them. It doesn't happen. Your soul has to be moved by their person. Something in you has to embrace them. You have to be willing and able to face the potential for deep, core love for it to become a reality. It involves a commitment.

That's not to say a commitment as in marriage or even relational loyalty. What I mean is you have to put your heart on the line. You have to commit to taking down the walls around your most breakable asset. Even if it's not all of them all at once, you're still accepting to make yourself more vulnerable than you are generally comfortable with.

That's how I believe you should approach spiritual growth.

My problem with trendy spirituality is it dabbles in a bunch of spiritual concepts and dogmas without ever requiring the person to fully participate. They end up getting barely enough of a soul stimulation to feel something different, but not enough to actually actively move the soul into significant change. Picking and choosing the most comfortable parts of any faith or spiritual doctrine deprives the soul of a true challenge, and that is what a soul craves most.

I have a lot of trouble with some of the Christian teachings (for example, the gay thing I've already discussed tons on this blog), but those things move me to growth. If I was reading the Bible literally only, I'd have shut it by now. But as part of my commitment to learning it, I've committed to doubting my doubts. I've committed to challenging the Bible and letting it challenge me rather than letting my conflicts and discomfort shut me down.

What is the benefit of that? Why bother keep trying to reconcile the Bible with what I believe to be right?

First, a lot of the stuff I've challenged the Bible with I have been the more wrong about. Like sex. One can't deny the desire for deep, intimate, soul-changing sex. And growing up in a society where sex wasn't a big deal, I used to laugh at the idea of waiting for marriage. But in reality, it was my view of the entire idea of marriage, love and intimacy that was messed up. My view of marriage was merely a partnership, a codependence whereby both parties were in it for their own benefit somehow. I never envisioned a marriage based on spiritual growth. I never envisioned a marriage where both partners lived in sacrifice for their own benefit and for the beauty and unity of marriage. I definitely never equated the intimacy of a committed relationship as worship, as being what God intended us to be. And while that view of marriage might possibly be just some fabrication of the church, what's detrimental about adopting it? What's the harm when the alternative is shallow and potentially dangerous to my person?

And second, if I happen to leave the challenge still believing I'm somehow right about whatever issue it is, my reasoning will have far more depth and thought behind it. Like with the gay thing. I've been forced to explore the reasoning behind the church's issue surrounding homosexuality profoundly in order to try to understand it. It's a work in progress though... :D My new massively intimidating ESV study Bible has a section in the back about homosexuality in the Bible. Reading that bit made me angry towards this particular version of the Bible, as well as toward the authors for perpetuating a view on homosexuality that is, in my view, not very Christian. While it did touch on the idea that Christians should love the gays, which I thought was a step in the right direction, that thought was not the predominant one in the section. The predominant ones, to me, were not based in the Bible nearly as much as they were rooted in common religious doctrine. One aspect that was touched on was how homosexual couples who adopt are depriving children of the chance to have a mother and a father. Nevermind that 50% or more of Christian marriages end in divorce, thereby depriving all those kids of a two parent home. Obviously, the ideal is to have both a paternal and maternal influence in a child's life. But sometimes, the next best thing is not the most Biblical thing, whether it be two gay parents raising a kid versus one struggling single parent, or as an unrelated example, women pastors leading the church in the absence of a suitable male pastor.

Sometimes, we have to make do with what our less than ideal world offers. We ate the apple, broke the world, and now, it's as though we're refusing responsibility for it. We'd rather fail at the ideal repeatedly than come up with solutions that actually work. That's not to say we should give up on God's idea for marriage, for the church and for us. All I'm saying is what's wrong with finding God in our less than ideal world? What's wrong with seeing God in our failures? What's wrong with cultivating a godly atmosphere out of an ungodly situation?

What is worse: a child growing up with a single parent who has nothing but disdain for God and the Bible, or a child growing up with a married gay couple who do believe and are consequently forced to reckon with God every single day?

We're human. We're broken. We're all broken. The only way we can be fixed is if we ourselves ask God for forgiveness and help with our brokenness. We can pray for others, but to frequently and publicly denounce homosexuality to a gay person as my ESV study Bible suggests is just turning them farther away from God. They know who they are. They know what the Bible says. They know. Stop focusing on their sexuality and start focusing on Jesus and on redemption.

Why would you forgive me for slipping and having a meaningless one night stand and not forgive a person for falling deeply in love with somebody of the same gender? Mine would be a far more disgusting and Godless act. But that's what the gay vs Christianity argument comes down to- judging one sin above another. That's where my problem lies. We're all sinners. Equally.

Anyway, I got sidetracked. My point was in challenging the Bible, I've developed a stronger foundation both for my own Christianity and my relationship with Jesus, from which I can try to help other agnostics and atheists, who are a product of the same society I am, figure out the answers to their questions and open them up for spiritual exploration a little bit more.

I will never answer a theological or moral question with "You just have to have faith." I promise. Well, unless I'm being sarcastic. :D You don't have to have blind faith (I think that's actually unChristian), but you do have to commit to finding the answer. And if you're really open, commit to the idea that if this Christianity thing is really real, God will prove you wrong.

My goal of this post, however, is just to bring up the idea that you have to go all in in exploring your spirituality. If you dip your toes into a hundred different pools, you still haven't immersed yourself and you don't really know what it's all about. Dip your toes in and then pick one and dive in. If it's the wrong pool, you will at least have core reasons why it's the wrong pool.

Like they say about Christianity- don't hate Christianity because of Christians or churches or pastors or small, secondary details of the Bible. Hate it because you hate Jesus and what He stood for. Hate it because He healed people and taught people to love one another. Hate it because He points out our flaws and selfishness and makes us strive to be better and more in community with those around us. Hate it because He makes us realize everything we have is a gift, that our world is a temporary, beautiful and painful experience for our eternal soul. Hate it because He died on the cross even though He had done nothing wrong. Hate it because while you were standing there yelling, "Crucify Him!" He had already forgiven you. Hate it because you know Him. But without knowing what it's all about, without truly diving into Christianity, you really won't know Jesus at all, nor how He can change you.

Really.

I know that from experience. All of the basic things Christians used to say to me:
"Proclaim Jesus as your savior and you'll be saved."
"Jesus is God."
"God is love."
"God forgives."
"Jesus loves you."
etc, were all meaningless to me until I got into it. I mean, you get a sort of superficial, literal grasp of it, but you don't get the soul moving aspect that is underneath all of those statements and really, nobody can explain it to you. Not even the best pastor in the world can explain it to you. It's just something you have to feel, and nobody can push you to feel it either. I believe God has to choose you. God has to show you Himself in a way that makes you understand through the particular way you need to be taught. God is a heart thing. Heart things are the most important things and are also the most incredibly personal things.

So dive in. Whether it's Christianity or yoga or whatever, start. Grow. Let it move you, let it break you, let it make you angry, let it build you and let it change you.

And work on it. Is your soul really worth only a few minutes of your time once in a long while? Or is it worth everything? What is the point of living if your soul isn't being fed?

Once you dive in, you'll realize that wherever you are, whatever you're doing, whatever your health level, whatever your fatigue level, there is always something spiritual you can be doing. It might be reading, writing, praying, meditating, sharing, singing, appreciating, or even just breathing. Spend some time in your soul.

Commit to it.

Aspirations...

"If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did."

- Tim Keller, The Prodigal God.

Six questions I had to ask (and had to try to answer...).

1. If the Bible is the word of God, and we can never fully grasp the complexity of God nor ever fully understand who or what God is, then how can we expect to ever fully understand the Bible? If there are four layers of the Bible (um... trying to remember them... but failing... the literal, the moral, the allegorical and the anagogical?), and naturally, we grasp one or a couple of those concepts easily and the rest, not so easily, then will we ever be able to fully understand the Bible the way God intended? If God is really God, and His knowledge would blow our minds beyond anything we've ever imagined and He inspired the Bible, anything short of it blowing our minds would probably indicate that we're not grasping any of it, right?

2. On a similar note, if the knowledge of God is beyond anything we can fathom, why do so many of us assume that if we challenge the Bible, we'll walk away agnostic or atheist? If the Bible is the truth, it can't be proven wrong. Right? So why not just dive in? I heard a sermon where the pastor quoted Martin Luther (I think?) as saying as he studied Romans, he "beat Paul into submission". I can't find the direct quote, but I think the point the pastor was making was that we should challenge the Bible until there is nothing left to challenge (which, really, probably won't be in this lifetime).

And to be honest, when I started reading the Bible, I was pretty certain it would end up being wrong in so many ways and I'd end up giving it up early on. But through the guidance of Christians and pastors who have studied the Bible as it should be studied, as well as through sermons and discussions, all of my unanswerable questions ended up answered. Not only that, but they ended up answered in such a way that subsequent questions would dry up too. Anybody who knows me knows that's not an easy feat. I was blessed with the most awesome set of teachers, but at the same time, the way God drove my heart into it, I sought out those teachers. I scoured the internet for pastors and Christians who had the intellect and devotion to Scripture along with the ability to teach it to me in a way that my mind was open to learning it. I'm grateful to have had the drive and the courage to doubt my doubts and actively seek out the answers and work through the conflicts I had with God, Jesus, Christianity and religion. I spent my entire life without that courage and without the need for God and out of nowhere, God chose me. God chose to change my heart and to open me up to Him at just the right time and just the right way that I might know Him. I don't know if I know Him yet, but at least now, I'm working on it.


3. If a person is born in a place where there is no Bible, no church, no missionaries, etc, is s/he choosing a life without God, which would consequently send them to hell? Or did Adam supposedly already make the choice for him/her? Or is it all just meant to point out to Christians even more clearly that we are choosing to let our brothers and sisters die- whether it be by not bringing them the "bread of God", knowing they are without access to anything that might let them make an "educated" decision about religion, or the bread of humans, knowingly letting them die of starvation, malnutrition, and disease from a lack of clean water. If we really did what Jesus commanded and went over there to spread the Gospel, we wouldn't have a choice through empathy to help those in need in any way we could. So when people in the world without the Gospel are starving, sick and dying, who needs the Gospel more- them or us?

4. One question (or argument) I had when I was agnostic/atheist was: Why doesn't God just destroy Satan? I've asked Christians, and I've searched the internet (there's a lot out there on this topic), but the answers never satisfied me. Satan's a part of God's plan. Or, Satan is necessary to divide the goats from the sheep. Or, Satan's trapped in Hell anyway, so he's ultimately harmless (um... except for all the temptation stuff?). Or, Satan is of no consequence and the issue doesn't matter because in the end God will be the final judge. Or, God needed an enemy. How can good exist without evil? So many answers, all sort of missing something- God, I guess.

And then it occurred to me last week as I was driving home from work in traffic, what if God loves Satan? I know, the immediate reaction is that that idea is absurd. But think about it. God loves us and we do horrible, evil things. We were with Him for ten minutes in the Garden of Eden and chose Satan over Him already. Satan is beyond our realm of evil, but God's love is infinite. If God is sovereign over all things and if He has a plan that will be executed no matter who is a part of it, then why would he bother getting rid of Satan? And if God loved Satan, there'd be even less of a reason to off him. Can we really say, "God is love (Satan not included)"? Or "God loves all Creation (except Satan)"? Did God make a mistake in creating Satan? Can the all-sovereign God who created life make mistakes? And if He did, wouldn't He both see them coming and be able to fix them before they happened?

5. Another problem I had was the whole "God is watching over you" thing. How can God be watching over everybody? And secondly, why would He care? Our culture today is one of abandonment and conditional love. It's becoming more and more difficult to believe that somebody who either doesn't know us at all or somebody who knows us inside and out, present, past and future, can love us wholly and unconditionally. It's just not in us to believe that that kind of unconditional love exists, even if our soul longs for it.

Somebody told me yesterday that they were a swinger. They expected me to be my usual liberal self and accept it. But I didn't. Sure, there's the obvious God component, where the intimacy of marriage creates an atmosphere of worship that allows us to draw closer to God and to knowing God, but that's not why I reacted badly. The reason I completely disagree with swinging is it validates our most pessimistic faculties; it confirms to us that we are not worthy of unconditional loyalty and love. It confirms that we just are not capable of that, even if it is what God intended for us. I know if any swingers read this, they'll probably resent it, telling themselves they're fine with what they're doing, it's all consensual, that it doesn't harm them in any way. But from my perspective, it so does. Can you imagine a love that never fades? A love built on respect, trust, loyalty, admiration, and sacrifice? A love that is earned through work but that is so worth it that the work in itself is rewarding? A love that replenishes the soul and helps us to see God? The kind of fairy tale love but on an infinitely greater scale- it's the kind of love the romantics set their sights on and the pessimists spend their lives scoffing. But what's wrong with wanting it? What's wrong with wanting the perfect love? Keeping in mind that "perfect" doesn't mean effortless or lazy, but earned and growing and deepening and causing us to rejoice in it, why do we settle for less? And even worse, why do we spend our lives confirming our worst case scenario for love? What benefit does that serve on a permanent level? How does it replenish our soul in a long term way? Can anybody argue that it does?

So our resistance to unconditional love aside, how can He watch over all of us and why would He care to? If God is really God and is sovereign over everything, then He created the world and everything in it. If God can pull together an entire universe out of the dust which He also created, how is it not in His capacity to watch over you? How is it not in His capacity to play an active role on multiple levels within your life? And if God is all sovereign and created life, He created you the way you are. That alone is setting you up for living your life somehow. He threw you into this particular family, knowing these events would occur in your life, knowing all you would go through, how much you would have to handle, how strong your character would have to be to make your life such that it accomplishes what it should as part of God's plan- how can He not be there? Why would He put so much effort into something and not stay to see it play out?

6. I used to say, "God is just a crutch the religious lean on so they don't have to handle everything on their own." It made the religious weaker than me because I was struggling with my stuff alone, with no God around to rely on or to tell me everything was going to be ok. That made me more resilient and more able to cope than religious people.

The first flaw with that concept is the idea of being alone. While I didn't have God to lean on, I did have friends and family and dogs around. I did have the love and support of those around me. Even if I'd reject that support so often, it was there.

The second flaw with that concept is if you truly know God, or since I'm not sure anybody can really know God, if you are truly seeking to know God, and you pray wholeheartedly in the hardest times to the point of meditation- I mean, give all of your soul and attention to prayer in those moments- you probably end up stronger than if you just handled it all alone. Why? Because in prayer, you not only have to face everything in order to ask for help with it, face your helplessness, but also give it all up to God. You give up the things you can't control: give up your anxiety, give up your grudges, give up your hurt. Basically, you give up all of your coping mechanisms. You let go of repression, grudges, resentment- all these ways that we close up our souls to protect them. How is that weak?

Sure, some people use God as a coping mechanism and those cases are particularly sad to me because it's unlikely they actually know God, instead are looking for a quick fix, an instant release of their burdens. They're using God to disguise repression. I guess it's idolatry, really. You're using this one small fraction of what you believe God to be and you're worshiping it for your benefit.

When I was betrayed a few months ago, I was careful in how I prayed for healing. I'm still new at praying, and part of me still believes I might pray "wrong" and ask for the wrong things and God will give me those wrong things just to show me the flaws in my prayer. So I was careful. I didn't pray for my heart to be instantly mended or for the pain to stop. I did pray for the strength to eat enough to survive (my eating kind of collapsed for a while). But most of all, I prayed that God teach me whatever He needed to teach me. Whatever growth this event of suffering and pain was meant to lead me to, let it happen. And give me the strength to endure until I'm ready to learn it. In all my pain, I gave it up to God. I didn't repress it. I didn't turn it into anger. And every night, as I prayed for my growth, I prayed for my betrayer's growth also.

Please God, open his heart. Please God, help him feel this hurt. Let him feel it with all his soul until he is crushed into submission like I am.

I'll admit that part of it was spite, but the major part was just to make this pain worthwhile. If this pain could change two people, to allow extreme growth in God for two of us, then it'd make this burden on my soul a lot easier to carry. If God broke me both because I needed to be broken and because by breaking me, He'd open somebody else's eyes too? Go for it. Break me to pieces, God. But just for me? All this just for my growth alone? Am I worth that? I guess God thinks so if that's His plan.

So is God my crutch? No. Jesus, beaten and tortured, carried his cross. No way will I lean on Him selfishly without taking that into account. Yes, God loves me, but knowing what He did for me, knowing the sacrifice, knowing the pain He must have endured to walk with me, I can't let him carry my bags. His love should be enough to give me the strength to carry my own. Not only that, but His love should be enough to give me the strength to help carry others' bags too.

I know this post was ridiculously long and it took me a few days of intermittent writing to finally finish it, but I hope it might maybe answer a few people's questions or stir up some thought...

The soul is an eternal thing. Why do we feed it temporary things when it needs eternal food?